One of the chief prerequisites for increasing the internal efficiency of radiation-emitting semiconductor structures based on nitride III/V compound semiconductor material, particularly based on GaN semiconductor material, is to reduce defect density in the nitride semiconductor material. The most promising method for this purpose is to prepare growth surfaces from the same material system as the particular radiation-emitting semiconductor structure that is to be grown epitaxially. Suitable substrates are difficult to obtain in many cases; by the same token, they can be produced only with high technical expenditure and are therefore much more expensive than the alternative substrates, such as for example SiC substrates and sapphire substrates, that are commonly used for GaN-based radiation-emitting semiconductor structures.
In the present context, the group of radiation-emitting semiconductor structures based on nitride III/V compound semiconductor materials includes in particular any semiconductor structure, suitable for a radiation-emitting semiconductor component, that comprises a layer sequence composed of various individual layers and that contains at least one individual layer comprising a nitride III/V compound semiconductor material, preferably from the nitride III/V compound semiconductor material system InxAlyGal-x-yN, in which 0≦x≦1, 0≦y≦1 and x+y≦1. This naturally does not rule out the possibility that the composition may include other elements besides In, Al and/or Ga and N. Such a semiconductor structure can for example comprise a conventional pn junction, a double heterostructure, a single quantum well structure (SQW structure) or a multiple quantum well structure (MQW structure). Such structures are known to those skilled in the art and thus will not be elaborated on herein.